Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Exposes the Depth of America’s Moral Crisis

Are happy days here again? This issue of our print magazine, with a beautiful cover by resident cartoonist Yogi Love, will share lots of evidence to support that contention. Indeed, in so many ways, from inflation, to crime, to immigration, and on and on, there’s good news. And yet…

My introduction will be the fly in this joyful ointment. Senior Editor and my podcast co-host Scott McKay calls me Eeyore. We have two years of podcast conversations of me seeing the worst. I apologize to you, loyal viewers, but I have a bad feeling that I can’t shake. I had planned to write this when the theme of the magazine was chosen over a month ago. The events of recent weeks have confirmed my unease.

Two days ago, at the time of this writing, conservative activist and college speaker icon Charlie Kirk was assassinated. One bullet. One clean shot. His life was needlessly snuffed out by a radicalized young man, born to proud, middle-class parents. By all accounts, the shooter came from a good family. They turned him in, after all. One can hardly fathom the grief and despair they felt in doing so. They turned their son in, knowing he will be punished with a death sentence. Thus two families were utterly ruined by a communistic toxic brain virus implanted in thousands of Americans. Charlie Kirk was gently, kindly, and bravely fighting the virus with words, and he was curing young people left and right. He was murdered for his trouble.